Vegan Sumac Food Trio
4/8/12 19:47![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eredienSumac Lemonade
Ingredients:
5-10 heads of staghorn or other [non-poison] sumac
Lots of cold water
1-2 c sugar for taste
Equipment:
The biggest bowl you have in your kitchen
The second-biggest bowl in your kitchen
A strainer with small holes
Paper towel or cheesecloth
Take the second biggest bowl and fill with coldish but not frigid water. Tap water is fine.
Grab one of the sumac heads, and sort of twist it like you were wringing out a towel or washcloth. Some of the sumac berries will come off in the water; this is fine. The branches are kind of pointy once the berries are gone, so you may want to wear dish gloves or something to protect your skin.
Keep doing this until the water is a nice pink color--not baby pink, but 80's hot pants pink.
You will now have a bundle of soggy sumac that you can discard in anywhere but the disposal.
Now you have a big bowl of water with berries and little berry hairs and stuff floating in it.
Set the strainer over the biggest bowl and put paper towels or cheesecloth in the bottom. Pour the pink stuff slowly through the paper towel so all the junk gets caught and you are left with a delicious clear pink elixir of summer.
Add sugar if needed; stir; enjoy. Serve in little faceted cups with mint sprigs and cucumber sandwiches if you like, because it just looks like the kind of food that calls for fancy treatment. Or you can just guzzle it straight from the ice tea pitcher. It's delicious.
Yield: about 1/2 gallon approx.
Sumac Simple Syrup
Use this to flavor drinks (?), or pour over waffles, or ice cream, or I guess you could really boil it down to make some hard candy but that seemed to involve more heat so I wasn't really interested.
Make the sumac lemonade above, and before you add the sugar to the whole batch reserve about 2 cups of sumac liquid and add about 1 and 1/2 c of sugar (or stevia, or agave, or whatever sweetener you like). The deal here is to get the sumacwater-to-sugar ratio about 1:3, so that the syrup is not sickeningly sweet but has a syrupy texture, unlike the lemonade.
Boil this down, stirring occasionally, until syrup thickens and turns a slightly deeper pink than the lemonade. You can eat this immediately or you can bottle it--I let this cool for a while, and then when it was cool poured it into a clean glass salad-dressing bottle I rescued from the recycling bin. It looks practically professional, except perhaps for the masking-tape label.
Yield: Makes about 1 c simple syrup after you reserve for the recipe below; if you do not make the ice cream you get about 1 1/2 c syrup.
Vegan Sumac Ice Cream
This recipe assumes you have a battery or electrical powered ice cream maker, and that you have prepared its container by freezing it or whatever else the instructions say to do for your model. Please substitute other nut or non-dairy milks to fit your diet.
1/2 can coconut milk (not coconut water; not cream of coconut)
about 2 c almond milk
1/2 c Reserved Sumac Simple Syrup
Pinch salt
Since you already added and concentrated the sugars in the syrup making process, you do not need to add any more sugar! I would also try this with soymilk but I really liked the subtle blending of the coconut, almonds, and almost lemon-like tones of sumac together. Plus, I had no soymilk.
Heat up the reserved syrup, stirring in the almond milk gently to combine. Add salt.
Just before the milk/syrup mix scalds, take it off the heat and immediately pour in coconut milk.
Cool to room temperature or below. I cheated by putting this near my AC unit but usually I put it in the refrigerator for an hour or two.
Put the cooled mixture in the ice cream maker, and put the ice cream maker in the freezer and start it up. In 24 hours you should have delicious sumac ice cream!
Serves: about 4 scoops; my ice cream maker is small (1 qt). If you have a bigger ice cream maker please scale up this recipe.
I think this would be fantastic with homemade Thai food. The spiciness and tartness of the food would segue really well to this creamy and slightly acidic dessert. This comes out a lovely pale pink/lilac color; very elegant!
Photos Will Follow - I am waiting for the ice cream to freeze so I can take a nice picture in a glass instead of just taking a picture of what looks like lavender soup.
Ingredients:
5-10 heads of staghorn or other [non-poison] sumac
Lots of cold water
1-2 c sugar for taste
Equipment:
The biggest bowl you have in your kitchen
The second-biggest bowl in your kitchen
A strainer with small holes
Paper towel or cheesecloth
Take the second biggest bowl and fill with coldish but not frigid water. Tap water is fine.
Grab one of the sumac heads, and sort of twist it like you were wringing out a towel or washcloth. Some of the sumac berries will come off in the water; this is fine. The branches are kind of pointy once the berries are gone, so you may want to wear dish gloves or something to protect your skin.
Keep doing this until the water is a nice pink color--not baby pink, but 80's hot pants pink.
You will now have a bundle of soggy sumac that you can discard in anywhere but the disposal.
Now you have a big bowl of water with berries and little berry hairs and stuff floating in it.
Set the strainer over the biggest bowl and put paper towels or cheesecloth in the bottom. Pour the pink stuff slowly through the paper towel so all the junk gets caught and you are left with a delicious clear pink elixir of summer.
Add sugar if needed; stir; enjoy. Serve in little faceted cups with mint sprigs and cucumber sandwiches if you like, because it just looks like the kind of food that calls for fancy treatment. Or you can just guzzle it straight from the ice tea pitcher. It's delicious.
Yield: about 1/2 gallon approx.
Sumac Simple Syrup
Use this to flavor drinks (?), or pour over waffles, or ice cream, or I guess you could really boil it down to make some hard candy but that seemed to involve more heat so I wasn't really interested.
Make the sumac lemonade above, and before you add the sugar to the whole batch reserve about 2 cups of sumac liquid and add about 1 and 1/2 c of sugar (or stevia, or agave, or whatever sweetener you like). The deal here is to get the sumacwater-to-sugar ratio about 1:3, so that the syrup is not sickeningly sweet but has a syrupy texture, unlike the lemonade.
Boil this down, stirring occasionally, until syrup thickens and turns a slightly deeper pink than the lemonade. You can eat this immediately or you can bottle it--I let this cool for a while, and then when it was cool poured it into a clean glass salad-dressing bottle I rescued from the recycling bin. It looks practically professional, except perhaps for the masking-tape label.
Yield: Makes about 1 c simple syrup after you reserve for the recipe below; if you do not make the ice cream you get about 1 1/2 c syrup.
Vegan Sumac Ice Cream
This recipe assumes you have a battery or electrical powered ice cream maker, and that you have prepared its container by freezing it or whatever else the instructions say to do for your model. Please substitute other nut or non-dairy milks to fit your diet.
1/2 can coconut milk (not coconut water; not cream of coconut)
about 2 c almond milk
1/2 c Reserved Sumac Simple Syrup
Pinch salt
Since you already added and concentrated the sugars in the syrup making process, you do not need to add any more sugar! I would also try this with soymilk but I really liked the subtle blending of the coconut, almonds, and almost lemon-like tones of sumac together. Plus, I had no soymilk.
Heat up the reserved syrup, stirring in the almond milk gently to combine. Add salt.
Just before the milk/syrup mix scalds, take it off the heat and immediately pour in coconut milk.
Cool to room temperature or below. I cheated by putting this near my AC unit but usually I put it in the refrigerator for an hour or two.
Put the cooled mixture in the ice cream maker, and put the ice cream maker in the freezer and start it up. In 24 hours you should have delicious sumac ice cream!
Serves: about 4 scoops; my ice cream maker is small (1 qt). If you have a bigger ice cream maker please scale up this recipe.
I think this would be fantastic with homemade Thai food. The spiciness and tartness of the food would segue really well to this creamy and slightly acidic dessert. This comes out a lovely pale pink/lilac color; very elegant!